Bureaucratic scrutiny raises hackles

If there's one thing rural landowners and farmers don't want the state tinkering with, it's the water they draw from below ground for their homes or crops.

Alex Breitler

If there's one thing rural landowners and farmers don't want the state tinkering with, it's the water they draw from below ground for their homes or crops.

"It's supposed to be a free country and you're supposed to be able to use what's under your property," said Paul Sanguinetti, who farms in east San Joaquin County. "But other people have other ideas."

Part of the water legislation approved by the California Legislature attempts to compel cities and counties to monitor groundwater levels.

To Sanguinetti, that's a dangerous step toward some bureaucrat telling him how much water he can draw from his wells.

To environmentalists, the law is not a step toward anything. "We think that we should regulate groundwater in the state," said Jim Metropulos, a legislative advocate for the Sierra Club. Like other elements of the water package - new conservation measures, for example - he feels the rule was weakened during negotiations and is now more voluntary than mandatory.

It's unclear whether the groundwater-monitoring law will have any immediate impact in San Joaquin County, where officials since 1971 have monitored wells and produced twice-a-year reports documenting the height of the underground aquifer. More than 550 wells have been included in these studies.

The county has also been trying to secure additional water from rivers and streams to take stress off the underground supply, which has declined for decades.

Under the new law, the state can step in and take over groundwater monitoring if it feels cities or counties are not doing an adequate job. Those who fail to follow the law would lose access to state grants and loans, a similar penalty to those who fail to heed new water conservation targets.

Late amendments to the law made it clear that neither cities, counties nor the state will be allowed access to private property without consent, nor can they require a property owner to submit data about his or her well.

And to environmentalists' dismay, the law also does not require analysis of the quantity or quality of groundwater that is taken.

State Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, called it a "fair compromise."

Peter Gleick, head of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute think tank, which specializes in water issues, has compared the state's current groundwater policy to a bank account in which you don't know the balance and you don't know how much is being taken out or put back in.

The new law doesn't fix that problem, he said, since it does not require reporting actual groundwater use. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office in 2008 recommended lawmakers approve a water rights system for groundwater, saying every other Western state except Texas has such rules in place.

For his part, Sanguinetti says farmers around here take good care of that precious underground reservoir. Those who were around for the severe drought of the late 1970s know how much it costs to deepen wells and pump water farther to the surface.

"We don't waste it, let me tell you," he said. "That's our dry year supply, and we've got to save as much of it as we can."